REVISTA CIENTÍFICA DE CINE Y FOTOGRAFÍA E-ISSN 2172-0150 Nº 12 (2016) INTERVIEW WITH GOVIND NIHALANI RUKMAVATI KI HAVELI: CREATING EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPES Amparo Rodrigo Mateu University of Mumbai, India [email protected] 25 years after filming Rukmavati Ki Haveli (1991), the Hindi movie adaptation of Lorca's play La casa de Bernarda Alba (Federico García Lorca, 1936), Mumbai-based Indian filmmaker and former cameraman Govind Nihalani (Karachi, 1940) vividly remembers the effect it had on him and relates how he adapted the play from Lorca's Spanish Andalusia to a film with an Indian background. 1 -Why did you choose Lorca and, among all his works, what attracted you to La casa de Bernarda Alba? I always liked theater and I was very close to a well-known Hindi theatre director. His name was Satyadev Dubey. He used to do English plays and he spoke to me a lot about some plays from Europe. Among them, he spoke about Lorca and this particular play. I had not read it but he described it as a strong play, so I became curious. I bought an English translation and I read it. I liked FOTOCINEMA, nº 13 (2016), E-ISSN: 2172-0150 321 the play very much because of its theme: authoritarianism and the rebellion against authoritarianism. I read it, I liked it and, then, I forgot about it. One day, I went to Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan. As I was going up the fort, I saw a group of Rajasthani women walking down. All of them -they must have been a particular tribe- were dressed in brown petticoats, brown skirts and black duppatas1 and chadars2, and wearing old silver jewelery. It was a very stark combination of colors, coming against the stone walls of the fort. That vision was very striking. They walked down and they passed me. I couldn't forget the visual of these women. Then I started making films and I thought that somewhere this visual needed to come up. I made a huge TV serial called Tamas (1988). It was a big theme. After that I felt exhausted and I wanted to do something intimate, something smaller, so I put up a proposal to attempt one of three European plays. I gave them The Father (1887), by August Strindberg (Sweden, (1849-1912); Little Eyolf (1894), by Henrik Ibsen (Norway, 1828-1906), and then I chose Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba (La casa de Bernarda Alba) as my third project. Three European plays adapted in Indian surroundings. The proposal was given to Indian television and they said I could go ahead. When I read The House of Bernarda Alba again, the same image of those women coming down that fort kept haunting me, so I decided to take that forward and I decided to place it in Rajasthan because Rajasthan is very close to the original play, since it is a very feudal culture, particularly in olden times. I thought that these 7 women -one mother, one maid and the five girls- in an old 1 Women garment which resembles a long stole worn in two folds over the chest and thrown back around the shoulders. 2 Large piece of cloth that women use to cover head and upper body, leaving only the face exposed. FOTOCINEMA, nº 13 (2016), E-ISSN: 2172-0150 322 haveli3 would be wonderful. So I decided to go for this play and make it into a film. I was very thrilled. I recreated the entire environment of a Rajasthani haveli and I gave these women the same color, the same kind of dress which I had seen. In my film you see the women also dressed in deep red, maroon and black and, of course, there is no jewelery because the ladies are widows. Apart from that I liked the theme as well. I was able to combine my aesthetic sensibility, my cinematic sensibility and my social and political concerns. And I was lucky to get very good actresses at that time. That is how you make a film. 2 -How do you translate the fear, the oppression and the claustrophobia portrayed in the original into your film? When you are adapting a play you cannot be literal. You cannot adapt word by word. You have to identify the theme and look for similar expressions in your own culture and your own language. The language I have used in my play is the feudal Rajasthani language. The way they would refer to their father or the way the daughters would address their mother is not a contemporary reference. It is a particular kind of dialect from Rajasthan. Even though the film is in Hindi language, we used some words as highlights to suggest a dialect being used. You cannot make it 100% in dialect. Nobody would understand it today. It was all a combination of finding the right linguistic expression, taking some words that would give me a suggestion of feudal society. It is like the way you address your elders, your boss or your servants. It reflects what kind of class you belong to, what kind of society this is. Then, the architecture and the dimensions of the haveli also play a role in it because they are made of old stone. Normally, these havelis will have a combination of big stones covered with plaster, in grey, white or yellow colors. I used stones, covered them with very thin paint and allowed them to show the texture of the stone underneath. And there is a particular kind of murals, paintings, of military-like figures, like elephants or horses. They are very popular and you will find them outside the doors, or sometimes inside also. Normally murals are very big because walls in feudal houses are big, showing 3 Old-style mansion typical from the north of India with thick stone walls and a central courtyard. FOTOCINEMA, nº 13 (2016), E-ISSN: 2172-0150 323 power. So these people are trapped within high walls made of stone. It looks like a prison. And besides, in these havelis, in these mansions in Rajasthan, with their high walls, the sunlight does not come in easily. Only when the sun is on the top, does the sunlight come in. So, most of the time, the interiors where women live are in shadow, allowing only soft light but not direct sunlight. Direct sunlight comes but for a very short time during the day. Even in terms of lighting, in terms of photography, I did not use direct sunlight. I used reflected light. There is a general light but there is no sunlight. Only when grilled windows appear, I show some sunlight coming in, just that much, not more. 3 -I guess being a cameraman also helped. It was conceived much before. That is how the scene was built. We decided on the size of the walls and from where the lighting would come. All these were well thought of before we erected them. 4 -What is the visual personality of the film that determines the particular kind of lighting? Everything was designed to create the impression of their voices having been silenced. There is no light in their lives. So everything had to create the impression that they are trapped inside, that they cannot escape. The whole thing is about breaking the walls and going out. That is what the rebellion is about: the youngest wanting to go out and escape from the entrapment. They should feel that they are trapped inside and that they cannot break through. The walls are too strong. Literally, philosophically, the authority is too strong. You cannot defy the authority and go even out of the door of your house. I played on the mood, which was a state of total helplessness, so they can only feel angry. They cannot do anything. And the youngest going out and having a FOTOCINEMA, nº 13 (2016), E-ISSN: 2172-0150 324 rendez-vous becomes a great defiance of the rules laid down by society. The last line of the play I think is a great line, when the mother says that her daughter died a virgin. She thinks that it would be a great stigma on the honor of the house that the youngest person went out and had an affair with somebody out of marriage. She is not prepared to accept it. These are the codes of conduct, which are accepted in civil society and this is very true, even today in some parts. 5 -Bernarda is the most powerful character in the story. How did you approach her, from a technical point of view, to give her the authority that she has? Bernarda is played by one of the best theater actresses at that time. There was hardly any make-up on her. I did not try to beautify her but, in fact, I tried to come out with the rawness of her face. And that was done with the lighting. It is about very simple tricks of lighting. As cameramen we know how to do it. And it worked well. Also the way, the kind of body language she created, the strains and the fact that she is a widow and she has to dominate even though she does not have the support of her husband. The way she did it was amazing. I did not have to do anything else. She understood the character very well. 6 -How was the filming process? Before we came on the set, at the same studio where we were going to shoot, since they were a family, I said they should get to know each other very well.